1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a simulation support method, a computer-readable storage medium storing a simulation support program, and a simulation support apparatus. More specifically, the invention relates to a technology for editing a simulation program for parallel computation performed in a cluster computer that includes a plurality of processors.
2. Description of the Related Art
The MATLAB (registered trademark) family including the Simulink (registered trademark) is widely known as a tool that provides a simulation prototyping environment for modeling, simulation, and analysis of a dynamic system in the real world. The MATLAB, which is a core module, provides a graphical user interface (GUI) and a numerical computation function. The Simulink provides the function of supporting creation of a block diagram model. The Real-TimeWorkshop (registered trademark) edits a stand-alone C code based on a model created and tested by the Simulink. The edited C code is used as a real-time application or a non-real-time application. This makes it possible to create a prototype, and conduct a Hardware-In-the-loop (HIL) test in a short time.
The time required for performing simulation increases with an increase in the size of a subject system to be simulated, such as a vehicle control system. Each of Japanese Patent Application Publication 2005-222420 and Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2007-122602 describes a technology for speeding up simulation using a large model, by executing distributed processing.
Discrete-time responses are continuously output by repeatedly running a plurality of processes in parallel in a cluster computer. In the parallel computation, if data is transmitted from a process in the nth step (n is an integer) to another process, a computation should be performed using the data as an input, in the other process in the (n+1)th step. However, in the above-described technology, it is not ensured that the data in the processes are synchronized. Therefore, the result of simulation using parallel computation in an environment in which a model is generally created cannot be made completely equal to the result of simulation using sequential computation.